Radio Script #407

Little Talks on Common Things

February 8, 1959

It has been some time since we have mentioned on this program that fine old Kennebec town of Belgrade — the town of the Chandlers, the Yeatons, the Farnhams and the Hersoms. Mr. Ross Beane of Silver Street has recently shown me two of the Belgrade town reports, published just five years apart, for 1881 and 1886. They yi~ld some interesting comparisons between each other, as well as giving us a picture of what it cost to operate a small Kennebec town three quarters of a century ago. In those two years the total cost of town government in Belgrade was very nearly the same, about $6,000 for everything that the town had to pay for. In fact the actual cost was about $300 less in the later year. Both of those years ended with a substantial balance in the town treasury, $500 in 1881 and almost a thousand dollars in 1886.

It is amazing to note how little the town spent on highways and bridges. In 1881 it was only $93; in 1886 only $150. Every town, however small, always found it expensive to care for its paupers. Belgrade made substantial improvement in this account between 1881 and 1886. In the former year it cost $850 to care for the poor, but five years later the cost was only $270. Somehow Belgrade had managed to reduce the number on relief. In those days the names of paupers were printed in each town report. The list for 1881 contained 20 names, while that for 1886 had only eight. In some manner the town had gotten rid of its most expensive poor families, seven Smiths and five Hawses.

I had no idea that firewood was so low priced in the 1880 1 s. In 1881 the town of Belgrade bought 20 cords of wood for the poor farm, for which they paid $14 — the amazingly low price of 70 cents a cord. Two paupers had to be buried at town expense, and the town paid H. W. Wells $17.75 for two coffins and robes, and C. W. Stuart $6.00 for the burials. Two barrels of apples for the poor farm cost a dollar a barrel, and an ox yoke for the same place cost 75 cents. What some of the voters probably considered a luxury item was a safe for the town records, purchased for 15 dollars. Some of the miscellaneous expenses were $6.15 for superphosphate, $3.50 for perambulating the line between Belgrade and Smithfield. Two claims for damages were settled: $3.50 to C. M. Weston for injury to his wagon, and 70 cents to Naruissa Ham for damage to a plow.

As usual the schools came in for a lot of attention. At that time the district system was still in vogue, though there was a town supervisor of schools, whose principal duty it was to inspect each district school and see that the laws of the state were complied with. Belgrade had 18 school districts. In 1881 there was a school in everyone of the districts, but by 1886 two of the districts had combined, so that there were only 17 schools.

To operate all of those districts and all of those separate schools, the town spent $2,048 in 1881 and nearly four hundred dollars less, or only $1,677 in 1886. Think of it! Seventy-three years ago the town of Belgrade spent an average of less than one hundred dollars to operate each of its schools. The highest paid teachers were of course the men. One got the then princely salary of $7.25 a week, but the supervisor thought it had been a waste of money, for he said in his report: “This is a hard school and needs a teacher of much pluck. When visited, we found the order good, yet it could be plainly seen that there was lack of interest. Had this teacher governed the larger scholars with a firmer hand, the school might have been much more profitable.” The usual pay for a male teacher seems to have been $6.25 a week, though two of them got only five dollars. The women usually received a cash payment plus board. The cash varied from two dollars to five dollars a week, the difference bei~g ga~~ed by t~e teacher’s experience and the size of the school. Board ran from $1.05 to $2.50 a week.

In 1886 Belgrade had 357 school pupils in its 17 districts, but the average daily attendance was only 217, or 61%. The school population was shockingly maldistributed. One district had 42 pupils, while three others had only three pupils each. But so jealous were local people of their district privileges that they were extremely reluctant to close a school. So at woefully disproportionate expense three of the town’s seventeen teachers spent their time teaching a total of nine pupils.

Both on this program and in “Kennebec Yesterdays” I have told how frank and uninhibited were the comments in those old school reports. In 1881 and 1886 Belgrade was no exception. I have already mentioned the supervisor’s uncomplimentary remark about the highest paid teacher in the town. Now let us see what he says about some of the other teachers: “At our first visit in District 1 the school appeared to be doing well, but at the close we found little progress had been made and the order was very poor. It was not a profitable school.

“In District 4 a lack of interest was painfully visible, and in consequence the results were only fair.

“In District 17 Mr. C. maintained good order, but there was an evident lack of drill and practical application; hence he got only fair results.

“In District 2, after a few weeks, trouble arose between the teacher and some of the boys, which lessened the interest and made the teacher’s duties more perplexing.

“In District 6 Mrs. H. aroused no enthusiasm in her pupils. Reading was sadly neglected, especially by some of the larger scholars.

“In District 10 some pupils were taken out by their parents for causes not wholly connected with the schoolroom. We think this teacher had some injustice done her by parents in the district, more to gratify a revengeful spirit than to promote the welfare of the school.

“In District 11 ~liss F. began right, and tried to make her school one of profit, but by putting too much confidence in her pupils at first, they soon got beyond her control •.

“In District 17, if the teacher had worked harder, her labors might have been more profitable to the school. In 18 we have a young man who is a good scholar and possesses some natural gift, but he can make himself far more useful -at some other calling than teaching. He does not adapt himself to school work and lacks the faculty to govern. It was an unfortunate term.”

Of course not all of the comments were uncomplimentary. In District 5 a young lady from Readfield had done so well that the supervisor said: “We recommend this teacher to the agents of our larger, more advanced and difficult schools.” A local girl had such success in District 7 that the supervisor said: “Good progress was made, and we think it is one of our best schools.”

The woman teaching in District 8 was also given a boost: “No school examined showed a more thorough knowledge of what they had been doing. This teacher is first-class.”

A man from Sidney taught in District 9. “The school was very quiet and conducted without whispering”, the supervisor reported. “Writing by systematic principles is receiving special attention, which can be said of few schools.”

In this year of 1959, when our whole nation is concerned about the teaching of mathematics in American schools, it is surprising to read in the Belgrade supervisor’s report for 1881 these words: “Mathematics has become a mania in our schools, causing a neglect of other branches of education equally useful.” In 1886 the supervisor, John Spaulding, was having textbook trouble.

He reported: “The matter of geography books, referred to your committee, remains unsettled. We considered the question and corresponded with the publisher of the book proposed, but received unsatisfactory terms. The textbook used as a speller is very much out of date. On entering upon my duties, I found the textbook used as a reader was inadequate. In one school I found three different series. I decided at once to make a change, and after examining several series I decided upon those which have been introduced the past year.”

Some well known names appear among those listed on the Honor Roll for 1886. Philip and Nellie Chandler, Louis, Ina and Stella Yeaton, Clinton and Prescott Wyman, and two girls whom I later came to know very well — Reilla and Hortense Hersom, proprietors for a quarter of a century of Camp Abena, one of the oldest and most famous girls’ camps in the United States.

As we close this part of tonight’s talk, let us note who were Belgrade’s town officers in 1881 and 1886. In the earlier year the selectmen were C. H. Wyman, S. Y. Spaulding and J.C. Taylor. In 1886 the overseer of the poor farm, on a salary of $75 was Elbridge Bickford. In 1886, when the salary had been raised ~o $200, the overseer was R. G. Cram. In the earlier year the tax collector was James Tebbetts. Five years later his place had been taken by J. S. Cummings.

The town incurred one expense in 1886 that it had not needed in 1881. In the earlier year the Fourth of July was apparently peaceful; but in 1886 the town paid $1.50 to Charles Davis as special constable on July 4.

Did you ever notice the toy-like little church on Route One just as you enter the town of Wiscasset? It is just a wee bit of a structure on a triangle of land and seats just two persons. It is probably the. only church in the world that has a golf ball on its steeple.

The originator and builder of the little church is a retired Baptist minister, Rev. Louis West, a native of Islesboro, who has for some time held residence in Hudson, Massachusetts, but he spends a long summer each year in Wiscasset. With his own hands he built and decorated the tiny church, a task that took him six months, for his 73 years did not permit the rapid work of a youth. The lumber cost him 25 dollars and he brought the posts from Hudson, where they had been part of an old homestead owned by a relative of President Coolidge. The elderly preacher adorned the church’s interior with a painting of two abandoned sailing vessels, giving the picture religious interpretation.

Why the golf ball on the steepl.e? Because, Mr. West says, “There is no game that brings people so close to the Creator as does golf. If people come to the church with the golf ball on the steeple, they will find the cross inside.”

The Wiscasset structure is not the first church Mr. West has built entirely himself. Four years ago, near his winter home at Hudson, Mass., he erected a miniature church, five by eleven feet, that seated four people. Until he put up the tiny church at Wiscasset, Mr. West claimed that his Hudson edifice was the smallest church in the world in which a service could be held. Just before Mr. West returned to his winter home in Hudson last fall, he performed the first wedding service to be held in the little Wiscasset church. Because there was just room inside for himself and the bridal couple, the offiCial witnesses as well as the wedding guests had to stand outside. But wedding bells rang out from the little church, because an interested neighbor had donated a farm bell, which Mr. West proudly hung in the little sanctuary.

When I was a student at Colby, nearly 50 years ago, Holman Day, Maine’s novelist and poet,. was still living, and he often attended Commencement with his classmate, Harvey Doane Eaton. I was delighted to find in an old issue of that Phillips newspaper, the Maine Woods, some verses by Holman Day that I have never seen in any of his collected poems. It seems that, in the summer of 1903, the glamorous Broadway star, Anna Held, spent a brief vacation at Belgrade Lakes. This is the way Holman Day burst into rhyme about that visit:

“I see’d that Anna Held traipse by a little while ago,

With a string 0′ dogs and a man or two, an’ a fishin’ rod in tow.

She’s stoppin’ at the tavern here, at Belgrade, Maine a spell,

An’ goes a-fishin’ every day, an’ likes it I hearn tell.

But every time she starts to walk down cross-lots to the lake,

Jest kind 0′ steppin’ high an’ wide for fear she’ll meet a snake,

With petticoats hitched up to what’s the reg’lar Paree height,

There ain’t a hired man will hoe so long’s she stays in sight.

I reckon she will cost Belgrade two hundred, if a dime,

Jest figgerin’ up what hired men have jipped us out of time.

But say! Them m n they ain’t to blame, for I jest calcilate

If that air gal asked me to come, by gosh I’d go dig bait.

Now I’m contented here to home, where women ain’t so free,

An’ don’t go smudgin’ round a stage, nor sing ‘Come play with me’.

I say I’m suited here to home with-Mafshy~Ann ~y wife,

An’ don’t propose to go kick up — not at my time of life.

But swan to man! When gals come here, say like that Held girl there,

With airs and flowers, frills and sich, an’ beau knots in their hair,

Yer git todreamin f bout a world there is outside the farm,

An’ somehow yer don’t look around on nature quite so calm.

An’ if that Anna Held should say, ‘Oh, come an’ be my beau’,

I swan, I’d cut an alder pole an’ dig some worms and go.”

Year: 1959